Let alone British Leyland.
People dream about owning a 55 Chevy. Nobody dreams about owning a Honda Accord.
The one and most important thing the author overlooks. The cars were built like TANKS! You could have a head on collision and both drivers would ligh up smokes and walk away.
“How did we ever survive in cars that did not all look like legless scarab beetles”?
As I stood on the seat next to him, my Dad would put out his right arm to keep me or my other brothers from falling when he hit the brakes. None of us ever fell or hit the dash.
It’s a wonder we didn’t get hurt but we didn’t.
I really don’t want to live in a safe world. I don’t. The quest for safety, the quest to make sure that no bad thing ever happens to anyone ever — that way lies madness. And socialism.
“How did we ever survive in cars that did not all look like legless scarab beetles?”
Our parents were good drivers?
And you’re sure right about the cars we grew up with having style instead of the boring junk cranked out today.
In “Green Acres”, Mr Haney used a seat rope.
Ya, but when a 70’s rice burner ran into my ‘57 Chevy, there was no damage to my Chevy, but $500 damage to the rice burner....this was in 75.
The steel saved us then.
It was the search for gas mileage that lightened cars and made them less protective of passengers.
And also the most beautiful, shit-hot pieces of automotive Americana that Detroit ever blessed these fruited plains with. God Bless The USA.
I know, the newest member of the family, the baby, got to sit in the front seat in mom's arms and the rest of us, the other five, had to sit in the back.
That 1 foot by 4 foot shelf behind the back seat? I usually got up there first unless my brother called dibs.
The road was wide open. Every town was different. We were free. Most of us made it. Some didn’t.
That’s life.
Wouldn’t trade it for anything they have today.
Safety in cars has come a long way but as someone who rents lots of cars I note that most new ones have replaced the old buttons and knobs on the dash (climate and radio controls) for a LCD touch screen which forces you to take your eyes off the road and look at the screen and navigate through menus to do something simple like change a radio station or turn up the fan. Really unsafe. At least the Edsel and the Pinto made it safe and easy to adjust the temperature in the car.
All “good ol’ days” reminiscing aside...people inside cars of that era (and I like ‘em as much as anyone else) who crashed at speed were turned into hamburger meat.
Yes, most of the people who drove those cars did so without incident and are around to remember the good old days now. But I have to admit I would not want to get into an accident in one of those cars. A car wreck that you can walk away from these days would most likely have been a lethal event for the occupants in some of those old cars.
I remember when you actually had to drive a car. Operate the machine. The safety systems in cars today mean you don’t have to pay as much attention to the vehicle or the road. Many people can and do make the same mistake many times.
You used to get one chance and if you got it wrong you probably did not get a second chance. All the safety systems are just diluting the chlorine in the gene pool.
Go ahead and flame me... Just don’t do it while driving unless you disagree with me.
Probably the worst thing about the old ones was the steering column was basically a spear aimed at your chest anytime the front hit anything.
Seat belts and air bags overall save lives but they still sometimes kill too.
At least they couldn’t be hacked. They were EMP proof, and when you turned off the key the engine shut off, and without the steering wheel locking to boot.
And a couple of screw drivers, and a pair of pliers could fix most things enough to get home. I can even think of more things.
The front passenger seat was call the ‘death seat’ because in an accident that person would often go through the windshild and die. In spite of that most of us didn’t use seat belts for the first few years... they were ‘lap belts’ and uncomfortable.
I remember being in an accident at an intersection with my Mother driving our 1952 Nash Rambler back around 1955 when I was 5 and my brother was 3. My brother and I went flying toward the full steel dash after the collision and bounced around (no seatbelts back then), but we were unharmed, except for a bruise or two.
In the late 1960s, I installed Pep Boys seat belts in my 1960 Volkswagon a week after three high school friends of mine were killed when they were thrown out of their vehicle after hitting a center divider at high speed.
Their car just spun around throwing them out with no damage to the vehicle.
We didn't.
Cars today are so safe that about the only way to get killed in one is to get thrown out of it.